I don't know how big it really is, but Tumblr seems to dig it. I mean, the aesthetic elements and traits of each can vary wildly, and sometimes pieces are almost unrelated. It might be obscure, I'm not sure, but it seems to all-in-all point to a sort of post-Internet post-Art sort of direction? It might be popular irl, but Facebook is ambivalent... It hasn't been too flooded with normies tho.

Tongue-in-cheek retrofuturism is a large aesthetic element for many pieces across the net. It's like a pessimistic look at the future of yesterday, by filtering it through today, and portraying it as the future of tomorrow.

I have quite a few edits, mostly of art I took from various internet sources... Lots of wallpapers and junk... Recently did this collab with a friend:My first run: My second run, over their edit:

As for the Kingdom Hearts iconography, I general do manipulations to music, which influences the aesthetic. Of course, all my art is trash, but tbh fam, most of my exploitables are from vidya n animu, as well as a number of celebrities, narcotics, n statues. Thank you tho, I take this to heart, even if I seem dismissive.

I think the issue here is that once you understand the formula for something, the results stop being surprising and interesting even if you've never seen that specific example before. This is an issue with games that have procedurally generated anything. Once you understand that an alien is basically just made of three segments bolted together with some extra cosmetic features tacked on and a recolour, exploring the alien biospheres ceases to be interesting.

This "vapourware" thing seems to follow a pretty predictable formula of taking stock images and applying various filters, plus mashing in some late 80s/early 90s pop culture.

I mean mine is legitimately not vaporwave at this point. Few, if any, of my samples are taken from the appropriate timeframes or sources, and my contrast sets are purple-green rather than red-cyan. I'm going more on taking western art, indigenous motifs from around the world, and the odd video game/drug/religious sample.